Hold On (The 'Burg #6)(146)

Ethan’s good.

Then he sent another text, this one to Mike.

Gotta do something before I come in. Be there as soon as I can.

He got a text back from Cher as he was sending the one to Mike.

Thanks, baby.

After that, she put a bunch of x’s and o’s intermingled with some flowers and ended all that, for some strange and hilarious reason, with an emoji of a ghost and one of a flashlight.

This meant he was smiling when he made the call he had to make and put his phone to his ear.

“Yo, son, heard you caught that homicide,” Dave Merrick said in greeting.

His father was a retired BPD detective. In other words, with a son on the force and just because he was who he was, he kept in the know.

“Yeah, Dad. Listen, you got some time this morning?” Garrett asked.

“I’m retired, Garrett. What else do I got but time?” Dave answered.

“Gotta swing around,” Garrett told him.

“You had breakfast?”

“Cher filled me up.”

Dave was silent, which reminded Garrett that in the last few weeks, he had not had a lot of time for his old man.

It was highly likely Dave had heard about Garrett seeing Cher.

But he hadn’t heard it from Garrett.

On this thought, the woman behind him in a BMW and a hurry honked. Still crawling with the traffic in front of him, he looked in his rearview mirror to see her gesticulating at him irately, as if he alone was holding up the proceedings.

He started to say something to his dad, but within two seconds, when he didn’t make the nine cars in front of him vanish by magic, she honked again and he saw her mouth moving in a way that wasn’t hard to lip-read as she continued to gesture. Half a second later, when she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror, she honked at him again and threw both of her hands up in angry exasperation.

He looked to his right to see kids heading into school, some on foot, some parking their bikes on a rack outside, many of them turned to watch the woman.

Seeing this, he put his truck in park, asking his dad, “You gonna be there, I swing around?”

“Yep, son. I’ll be here,” Dave replied.

“Great. Be there in ten, maybe fifteen,” he told him as he threw his door open.

“See you then.”

He disconnected as he angled out of his truck, his phone beeping with a text from Mike that Garrett glanced at and saw said, Gotcha.

He moved toward her car, and the woman stopped gesticulating and stared at him as he looked beyond her to gesture to the cars waiting to swing out and pass them in order to keep traffic flowing.

He then shoved his phone in his inside jacket pocket, which gave him the opportunity to push his jacket back, exposing his badge on his belt as he dropped his hand and put it on his hip.

He made it to her side of the car and tapped on the window.

It whirred down and she looked out.

“Sorry, didn’t know you were police,” she muttered, cheeks pink, eyes hidden behind expensive sunglasses even though the sun had barely risen.

But her expression was easily read, showing irritation at the further delay, something she was not going to share to his face, and embarrassment because she’d been caught by a cop who could do something about her being an impatient bitch.

“It make a difference I’m police or not?” he asked.

“I’ve got an early meeting,” she explained. “Dropping off Asa, I’m late for work.”

“That might be so, ma’am, but, and I hope you agree with me, you honkin’ and behavin’ like that in front of a bunch of nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds does not teach good lessons. Makin’ it worse, nothin’ anyone can do to make the drop-off go faster, seein’ as there’s nowhere anyone can go until it’s open to go there. So think it’s best you keep your hand off your horn and wait your turn like everyone else.”

“They should do something about this,” she snapped, flicking a hand at the cars slowly passing them, a long line to get in, the line crawling to get out. “It’s like this every day and it’s ridiculous.”

She was not wrong.

He didn’t share he agreed with her.

He stated, “That’s not the issue. The issue is, I got a boy in that school and he’s of an age where there’re a lot of ways he’s learnin’. And I don’t want him to see folks actin’ like you and thinkin’ it’s okay when it’s not. He’s gotta learn to be patient, workin’ with his fellow citizens to get on in life. If this situation doesn’t work for you, take it up with the school or the town or suck it up like everyone else. Don’t take it out on other parents who got the same goal as you to get their kids to school safe and get on their way. Yeah?”

“Yes, Officer,” she mumbled.

He nodded. “Thanks for your time.”

She nodded back.

He walked to his truck, thinking that there was not a lot of joy in his job.

Except when he got to do shit like that.

He got in his truck. It took him all of three minutes to crawl to the exit of the school and pull out.

Then he went to his dad’s.

He pulled in the driveway, got out, and made his way up to his dad’s house, the house Garrett and Raquel grew up in, the house their mother was murdered in.